Journal
ADVANCES IN SPACE RESEARCH
Volume 42, Issue 3, Pages 497-503Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2007.08.005
Keywords
millisecond pulsar; cosmic ray electrons; Geminga; PSR J0437-4715; local interstellar spectrum
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PSR J0437-4715 is one of the closest millisecond pulsars (NISPs) to Earth, lying at a distance of - 140 pc. This pulsar has a characteristic age of 4.9 Gyr and a relatively low spindown power of similar to 10(34) ergs/s. During its rather long lifetime, a large fraction of the energy output has been in the form of multi-TeV electrons. In this paper, we investigate the possible contribution of this nearby MSP to the local interstellar electron spectrum (LIS). The old age of the systemjustifies a steady-state evaluation of the contribution from this pulsar to the LIS. We calculate the electron spectrum at the light cylinder in the framework of a General Relativistic polar cap (PC) model, and use this as an injection spectrum in a diffusion model. The younger Geminga pulsar is also very close to Earth and warrants investigation. A steady-state approach is however no longer justified, so we use an impulsive injection model. We will present results of a study of the contribution from these pulsars to the cosmic ray (CR) LIS. Our calculations show that pulsars like Geminga can make a non-negligible contribution to the LIS. (c) 2007 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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